Stasis The Sedate
Christina Dionysopoulou Stigma
EDIFICE Dance Theatre Tenome – eyes on hand
One woman constantly sewing. Another one, inside a plastic bag. Dazzling earrings. Plastic pink heels. Shiny dresses on top of sports trousers. Fake laughs. Plastic bags. Massive gloves. Loud singing. Even louder techno music. Acting as if chatting. Sexy hip moves. Violently fighting a ghost. Tongues. Macarena. ‘O Sole Mio’. Put all of these in a bowl and mix it with a lack of composition, an aimless idea and confusing choreography. Not that a choreographic and performative exploration cannot be made in the line of the absurd and nonsense, but the predictable piece by Stasis, The Sedate, was even far away from that too.
A fissure of light opens in the ground while the expressiveness of a back hits our eyes. A spectrum of images, emotions and sensations is delivered with coarse subtlety in Christina Dionysopoulou’s Stigma. Jonadette Carpio performs an authentic solo that could be seen as a duet between herself and the illuminated spaces, designed by Antony Hateley. Halfway through the piece we observe foregrounded, a frame in which her visage contorts in micromovements creating butoh like portrayals of laughing, asphyxia, struggle and effort. In an unexpected end, she goes away to never come back.
To close the night, four extraterrestrial creatures appear in a foggy dark atmosphere; eyes covered and wearing tribal costumes. As animalistic silhouettes, they start to acknowledge and recognise each other by flashing hand-held lights. After these first captivating images, the piece starts to evolve into a completely different narrative, making me wonder if it needed one at all. What follows is a series of well known dynamic sequences in duets and unisons that unfortunately had nothing to do with the first qualities and ideas explored. Despite the incredible strength and abilities of the performers, Tenome – eyes on hand by EDIFICE Dance Theatre became at times predictable and dull.
Reviewed on 22 Feb at The Place by Coral Montejano Cantoral